A Love Connection
by Rensong
Summary: Love is in the air... or is it the software?  This is actually a crossover of a sorts, but sharing what the other fandom is would totally ruin the surprise.  Written as a series of one shots, so the chapters don't really have any rhyme or reason.
1. Chapter 1

**Love Connection - Prologue**

Tony Stark had broken leg.

_Tony Stark_, Iron Man-superstar-mechanical savant, was down with a _broken leg_.

Six weeks, the doctors said. _Six freaking weeks_ before he was allowed to do _anything_ - no Iron Man, no bouncing around the boxing ring with Happy, no dare-devil, high speed Sunday Drives. Hell, he wasn't even allowed to go _jogging_ for Six. Whole. WEEKS.

It wasn't even a manly injury, earned through his own blood, sweat and tears as he fought off crazy terrorist in some unpronounceable little country in Africa. At least _that_ would be another badge of honor offered up on his podium of awesomeness, and that was totally the official story he was selling to the media.

The real reason, though - 'I tripped over a circuit board I had been working on and fell down the stairs' - was a huge blow to his Bad Ass image.

"I _warned_ you," Pepper pointed out to him while they plastered a huge, clunky cast around his leg. "I said, over and over again, 'Tony, leave your toys in the work room, because I am tired of tripping over them!' I _told_ you that leaving machine parts all over the floor was a good way to break your neck, because you're always too oblivious to even simply _watch where you step_ whenever you're working on a project! You have _no one_ to blame but yourself, and unless you do _exactly_ as the doctor orders, I am totally leaking this epic example of your true genius to the press."

Pepper was great. Pepper was _amazing_, and very good at her job. They had worked with each other for the better part of a decade, and no one knew him better. The downside of this, of course, was that she also knew _exactly_ where to stick in the knife, and how to give it little twist just for kicks.

xxxx

"But, Peppeeeer..." he whined, facing her across his desk back home the next day, "what am I _possibly_ going to do for SIX WEEKS?"

Unimpressed by his Man Pain, her response was a slightly feral grin, and Tony was actually kind of afraid of her for a second or two.

"Paperwork," she replied.

With that proclamation, she deposited a stack of papers at least eighteen inches thick onto his desk, neatly separating them into three smaller - but no less daunting – piles she had no doubt organized beforehand.

She pointed to the first. "Correspondence from various military brass still on your case about the suit - you will read them all and respond accordingly, and I've already left orders with Happy _and_ Jarvis that every reply goes through me first so you don't offend anyone - intentionally or otherwise - who has the power and the means to blow your ass out of the sky next time you fly anywhere you are not supposed to."

She pointed to the second pile. "Invoices from all the Stark Industries purchases and sales for the last month. Sign by every X and initial on the dash marks, please." He counted no less than three Xs and five dashes on the top page alone, and his hand cramped just thinking about the rest.

She pointed to the third and thickest of the piles. "Bills, due before the end of the month," and yes, the feral grin definitely had a slightly rabid edge to it now. "Perhaps if you actually see how much money you pay out per month, Iron Man might be less inclined to destroy so much property in the process of saving the world."

Lastly, she handed him a post-it note filled planner, the color coordinated tags fluttering with the movement. "Blue are board meetings, pink are important lunch dates, and green are tours of your facilities. Due to your particular brand of disability at the moment, I have helpfully called ahead to request wheelchair service for all of them."

Tony allowed himself an internal smirk. If he couldn't avoid the paperwork, _at least_ it should be plenty easy to skip out on the meetings, especially without Pepper around to nag him.

Before he got too self-congratulatory, though, she continued. "You are quite welcome to try and avoid them like you usually do, of course, but Rhodey helpfully offered to have one of his most talented techs rig Jarvis for low voltage electro-shock therapy in every room of the house while you were in the hospital. For every five minutes you are late, he is equipped to zap you with 8000 volts, and the voltage increases by 100 every five minutes thereafter."

The smirk died a cold and brutal death. "That's inhumane!"

"That's business," she replied, deadpan without the tiniest flicker of sympathy.

Explanations finished, she straightened and smiled serenely at him. He'd almost believe it if not for the utterly evil gleam in her eyes. "If you have any questions, ask Jarvis - he knows all the account numbers and supply codes." Then she turned and walked away, steps jaunty and looking far more cheerful than he'd seen her in... well, ever.

It was at that point he realized that she really was walking away and _leaving_ him there with a huge pile of paperwork and no one for company except the robots. "Wait! Where are you going?" he yelled after her, panicked.

"New York," she responded without out even turning around. "Back on Friday. Have fun!" With one last backward wave, she was gone.

Tony eyes the three neat stacks on his desk, and something deep inside shrinks and withers away with a whimper.

xxxx

LATER THAT WEEK

"Jarvis, why the _hell_ is there more than three hundred dollars worth of long distance calls to Oregon on this phone bill?"

end~

_AN - Yes, there will be more. I have two more short little blurbs planned, and hopefully the muses will inspire me with more material after that.  
_

_Lastly, for my fellow grammar nazis out there - I know I jumped from past tense to present tense on the second to last line, it just didn't seem to flow very well if I done wrote it proper. I do apologize for my grammatical failings._


	2. Chapter 2

**Love Connection** – Eureka/Iron Man drabble

xxx

Carter had thought he had seen everything. Living in Eureka, where the phrase "Six impossible things before breakfast" had a whole new meaning, where genius and madness combine with science to make brand, shiny new ways to accidentally destroy the world on a regular basis, Jack Carter *really* thought he had seen everything.

Unfortunately, Jack Carter found he was often wrong.

"So... our houses are dating." It was a statement, not a fact. He took very small comfort when Tony Stark, on the other end of the line - _Geezes Christ, *another* freaking Stark_ - seemed almost as baffled as he was.

"We met on the internet!" SARAH chirped in, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Through the wonderful clarity of the vid link, Jack saw the lights flicker briefly in the room beyond the Stark Industries CEO, and heard a satisfied, slightly computerized hum in the background. Judging from the way Stark flinched, he heard it, too.

"It... would appear so." Tony ground out, looking just as awkward and uncomfortable as he felt about the whole messed up situation. Then his face melted into a smug, cocky grin. "Treat the lady right, Jarvis, make sure all your protection protocols are up to date, and you'd better have her back by curfew."

Jack's only response was to bury his face in his pillow and groan. "Oh, god, I don't want to know."


	3. Chapter 3

**It's All in the Way You Say It, Baby**

After two incidents with exploding garden gnomes, a minor meltdown in a small fusion reactor, and three calls from Fargo who somehow managed to imbibe himself with enough static electricity that he quite literally stuck to *everything* he got close to - which lead to all sorts of uncomfortable male closeness issues that he would much rather forget ever, *ever* happened - Jack Carter arrived at his bomb-bunker home with visions of ice-cold beer and a totally mind-numbing evening in front of his big screen dancing through his head, watching San Diego and Denver battle it out on Monday Night Football.

With one hand carrying a six pack of some of Vince's finest brews, and the other wrapped around what was left of one of the unfortunate garden gnomes, Jack just didn't have the energy to try juggling either. "Sarah," he asked instead, resisting the urge to rest his forehead against the rust-flecked metal of the wall while he waited, "door, please."

He heard the mechanism unlock, and familiar hiss of pressurized air as the door swung open was the best sound in the world. Basking in the familiar routine, it is completely understandable why he might've jumped a foot of the ground and screamed a bit when a smoky, alto female voice completely shattered the norm and turned the traditional greeting - "Welcome home, Sherriff Carter" - into an advertisement for a 900 number as soon as he walked in the door.

"_Geezes CHRIST!_" he cried, dropping the gnome and jumping back hard enough to bruise his shoulder on the doorframe. Noticing he now had one hand free, he clutched it to his chest to determine that no, in fact, his heart hadn't actually erupted out of his ribs, though it sure felt like it was making a darned good effort.

Jack blinked, took a few moments to catch his breath, then squeaked, "Sarah?"

"Forgive me for startling you, Sherriff," his AI apologized in her normal, overly chirpy tones. "I asked Fargo for a voice upgrade, and I've been testing out some of the voice clips he sent to try and determine which one seems most fitting. That one was listed as 'Smoky Sensation'. Did you like it?"

"It was..." _unsettling_ "... nice."

"Oh, good! Jarvis and I will be having another phone date tomorrow night, so I want to make sure I sound my best!"

Jack cringed, then pasted a fake smile on his face and continued through the bunker entryway, kicking the discarded gnome clear of the door so it could close proper, but otherwise leaving it where it dropped. "That's great, Sarah. I'll remind Fargo to check your privacy settings in the morning, and then Zoe and I will plan for dinner at Cafe Diem tomorrow night so you don't have to..." his voice started going all squeaky again "divide your attention."

"Oh! That would be wonderful, Sherriff!"

"No problem." Jack cleared his throat, and requested she pour him a shot of bourbon while he stashed the six pack in the fridge for another, less disturbing evening. He downed the shot in one gulp, ignoring Sarah's harmonic hums of disapproval when he requested a second one and did the same. Perhaps if he got drunk enough, he could forget this conversation ever happened.

~~end~~

_AN - And that would be part two of my little crack creation. As of the moment, I only have one more part written out - this time from Tony's end, and I once again apologize for making this one more Eureka-centric, but you gotta get *both* sides of the story, right? Considering how much fun I have been having writing this, though, I'm really hoping the muses give me more to work with eventually. :)_


	4. Chapter 4

_Woops... so I may have kind of forgotten to post this particular tid-bit? Sorry! I think my plan was to add onto it a bit before uploading it, but then I went and got distracted by the Dogma story I've been working on, and then things went and got a little crazy at work with all the last minute stuff I had to do before I left, and then I went and moved across the country. And somewhere along the way, poor Jarvis and Sarah got forgotten. Hopefully they will forgive me and inspire more crack (__I here I tried to think of a pun involving crossed-wires or path-intersects, but I failed)__ in the near future. :)_

* * *

A focused Tony Stark cannot be easily distracted. Any time he is working on one of his various projects or machines, "oblivious" doesn't even begin to cover it (as the cast he was still clunking around in could contend). Elbow deep in hydraulics or circuitry, it is quite possible that bombs could be going off outside his house, and Tony probably wouldn't even notice unless Pepper or Rhodey were around to slap him around a bit - Pepper in particular was vicious and liked to grab his ear and drag him away like an errant child whenever she decided he was too engrossed in his work - as a method of distraction.

Today, though, for perhaps the first time in his life, Tony Stark was having trouble staying focused on his work, because there was A Sound.

It wasn't a loud sound; in fact, it probably didn't even rate 20 hertz, and it was akin to the level of sound a fly or a mosquito might make in the background. Not something you notice right away, but once you do, it suddenly has your complete and total attention and you can't go back to not hearing it, and it drives you *crazy* until you figure out how to stop it.

Giving up on the pile of computer parts in front of him - video sensors for Dummy, because maybe if the robot had eyes, he would be able to better tell whether or not Tony was on fire or just smoking a bit from some minor electrical shocks - and started wandering around his workshop, sticking his ear down next to the various and sundry robotic parts, suit upgrades, and other random gizmos in an blind attempt to figure out what was making The Sound before he went nuts and smashed everything in his lab.

Twenty minutes later, he determined that The Sound was not coming from one particular object, and instead seemed to emanate from the entire house as a whole.

After another moment of stumped contemplation, a rather uncomfortable thought started wiggling through his brain.

"Jarvis," he asks, testing his theory.

"Yes, sir?" and sure enough, the The Sound stopped as soon as his AI responded.

"... Are you seriously *humming*?"

"Was I? I hadn't noticed," Jarvis replied primly.

"Right..." Tony clunked back to his work table and the machine parts scattered across its surface. Maybe if he ignored the Giant RoboElephant in the room, it would go away.

Five minutes later, The Sound was back.

Tony could think of only one reason why his previously musically-disinclined AI might suddenly have developed a taste for - he listened again, because there was definitely more to it than just humming...

_Huh, two-part harmony. Perfectly in tune, too. Go Jarvis._

Then he winced at the unintentional double-entendre_._

Rather than draw attention to it again, he feigned nonchalance and asked Jarvis to put on some music instead, and the uncomfortable humming was quickly drown out by the brass throb of Black Sabbath. For the first time since this whole AI... thing... started, Tony was starting to understand where that Carter guy was coming from - There are just some things he really just did not want to know.

* * *

_And I am sad to say, this is all I got, folks. I will leave the status as "In Progress" because hope springs eternal, but for the time being, I remain uninspired. You all should get on Jarvis and Sarah's cases and try remedying that. ;)_


End file.
